


I dreamt about you last night

by Challenges (DanceInTheKitchen)



Series: 100 ways to say I love you challenge- Batfam edition [7]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: (just nightmare about being dead... y'know normal Jason things), Angst, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Ice Cream, Jason Todd Deserves Better, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Lil bit of Death, Nightmares, Stephanie Brown is a good sister, so im going to give him better, via ice cream and an annoying little sister
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:40:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27229006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanceInTheKitchen/pseuds/Challenges
Summary: Death is something he doesn't try to think about often.He doesn’t think about it all the time, but Jason thinks about death and dying a lot more than he assumes is normal. He tries not to, but it’s hard.Dying will do that to you.Sometimes when Jason wakes up he can smell the dirt, feels the bugs crawling in his hair, feels the dirt and wood under his nails.Tonight is one of those nights.Or, the cure to nightmares is a sister, ice cream, and butter knives, apparently.
Relationships: Stephanie Brown & Jason Todd
Series: 100 ways to say I love you challenge- Batfam edition [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1987897
Kudos: 74





	I dreamt about you last night

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter was partially inspired by a comment I saw on youtube.
> 
> Stephanie & Jason for prompt 3 :D
> 
> This was originally posted on a diff work on my main pseud!
> 
> Enjoy & let me know what you think in comments!!

Death is something he doesn't try to think about often.

He doesn’t think about it all the time, but Jason thinks about death and dying a lot more than he assumes is normal. He tries not to, but it’s hard.

Dying will do that to you.

When Jason was really little he remembers sitting at a dirty table in a dirty apartment with the person he called Mom. He remembers reading the news off of a wet newspaper. Jason had always been fascinated by the obituary page.

There he would read stories about people's lives. He would see their accomplishments. He would read about the family they left behind and all the people that loved them. The people who missed them now that they were gone.

He used to wonder what his obituary would read.

Jason remembers asking his mom about death. He had been swinging his little legs on the old chair at their dirty table. Jason had been reading obituaries for months by that point. He noticed that they all called the people in it “good”. Everyone was a “good” man or woman. A “good” mother or father. A “good” person.

“Mommy, why do good people die?”

He doesn’t remember much about his childhood. The memories are spotty due to his death and normal forgetting that comes with growing up. But he remembers her response as clear as day.

“When you’re in a garden, what flowers do you pick?”

Jason had responded that he would pick all the pretty ones! He didn’t really understand it at the time. He wouldn’t understand her words until later.

Now, when he looks back on that conversation he thinks he understands what she was trying to tell him.

~~ He doesn’t know what that says about him. He died young, but was brought back to life.  ~~

He wonders sometimes, what his obituary read. What they said at his funeral.

~~ Jason’s too scared to look. Too scared to see what they said. If they even said anything. ~~

Jason doesn’t think about any of this too often. Just when things get bad.

When he has an argument with any member of his family, especially Bruce, Dick or Tim, that digs under his skin.

When he thinks about Damian and the sword that was plunged in his chest.

When the walls close in like the sides of a coffin.

Sometimes when Jason wakes up he can smell the dirt, feels the bugs crawling in his hair, feels the dirt and wood under his nails.

Tonight is one of those nights.

He woke up with a scream muffled in the back of his throat. Jason’s eyes stung with unshed tears. The nightmare fading, but not leaving, as he quickly rolls off his bed and onto his feet.

Jason pauses for a minute, standing in the middle of his bedroom in his pajamas, unsure of what woke him up.

Then he hears a sound from his kitchen. He grabs his gun, heart pounding, as he silently rushes to the kitchen. As he nears the kitchen he gets ready to shoot whoever was in his apartment…

...and abruptly stops when he rounds the corner and sees Stephanie sitting on his counter eating ice cream.

He sighs and tucks his gun into the waistband of his pajama pants.

“What are you doing here?” He asks grumpily. His heart is still pounding both from the residual panic and fear from his nightmare.

“I’m eating your ice cream.” Stephanie says blandly, her voice muffled around a spoon. She finishes swallowing the mouthful before continuing. “Mom and I ran out of ice cream. I was going to head to the manor because Cass has the best ice cream, but it’s like three am and Alfie would have my head.”

Jason just glares at her and plops down onto a seat at his kitchen table. “So you decided to come to  _ my _ apartment.”

“Yep!” She cheerfully says, taking another bite of his ice cream.

He just sighs again and shakes his head. 

Honestly out of everyone in the Batfamily he could have woken up to eating his ice cream at three am while sitting on his kitchen counter, he was glad it was her. She didn’t have the, for lack of better words, history he and Bruce, he and Dick or he and Tim had. She didn’t remind him of death like Damian did. She didn’t remind him of all the better times that had come before, like Alfred did. She also wasn’t as perceptive as Cass, who would have been able to tell that Jason had just woken from a nightmare.

(He forgot that Stephanie may not be perceptive, but she is smart and better at emotions than most members of their family. She knows what nightmares are like.)

Stephanie was also pretty funny, not in the punny way Dick was, but in a self deprecating way that Jason could vibe with.

~~ She also knew what it was like to feel here and not here at the same time. Stuck between existing and not existing. Dying will do that to you. ~~

“Hey.” Stephanie says, breaking Jason from his thoughts. “I dreamt about you last night.”

Jason is thrown for a minute, because  _ what _ .

He’s not really around that often, and he and Stephanie don’t see each other outside of patrols much. He has no idea why she would have a dream about him, so he just blinks at her, waiting for her to continue.

She does. “I think it had Beyonce? You were making onion rings but you ran out of onions and were using pickles. And Beyonce was there singing in the background about you needing to put a ring on it. And you were Gordan Ramsay-ing it up, yelling and trying to get the pickles in a circle in the shape of a ring. I think I might have been there as a goat. Oh! Also there was this lettuce wrap that was-”

Jason tries to follow what she’s saying, really he does. But it makes absolutely no sense, and for some reason it makes him laugh.

Before he knows it he’s laughing hard enough to wake his neighbors, but it’s three in the morning, he just had a nightmare, his sister is sitting on his kitchen counter eating his ice cream telling him about her insane dream, and he doesn’t have enough brain cells to make anything make sense.

Jason laughs so hard that there are tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. When he wipes his eyes and looks at Stephanie, she’s smirking a bit. She doesn’t say anything though, she just offers him a spoonful of chocolate ice cream.

As he eats the ice cream and debates with Stephanie about Beyonce’s best song and who in their right mind would join a lettuce eating contest, Jason can feel the sick, cold feeling he had after his nightmare fade away.

He can’t smell the dirt anymore, or feel the bugs, or feel dirt and wood under his fingernails.

He can only taste chocolate ice cream, smell the perfume Stephanie wears, and feel the warmth in his chest.


End file.
